Our Say: Without state and national action, there will be another Odessa. Another Annapolis.

Capital Gazette|

Sep 02, 2019 | 5:10 AM

Authorities cordon off a part of the sidewalk in the 5100 block of E. 42nd Street in Odessa, Texas, Saturday, Aug. 31, 2019. (Odessa American/Mark Rogers/AP)

Seven.

The numbers tend to stick in your mind, giving a false impression that a bigger number implies a greater tragedy.

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By Sunday afternoon, the death toll in a West Texas shooting rampage the day before had risen to seven. By the time you read this, it might be eight.

More than 20 wounded.

Do we count ourselves lucky that it wasn’t more? Do we consider Annapolis spared because it was only five last year?

The news is depressingly familiar, even if the details are different. A man stopped by state troopers for failing to signal a left turn opened fire on them and fled, shooting more than 20 people in Midland and Odessa as he drove before being killed by officers outside a movie theater.

What follows will feel depressingly the same.

We will be told that it wasn’t the gun’s fault. It won’t matter what kind of gun it was, apparently some kind of rifle in this case. Bad men kill. Not guns.

Mental health is the problem, not guns.

A good man with a gun is the solution to a bad man with a gun.

Here is the reality. American has a gun crisis.

Whether it is a handgun used in the death of a well-known rapper in Annapolis, a legally purchased an AK-47 variant or shotgun or something else — guns are the problem.

Mental health is connected to gun violence: suicide, not homicide or even mass shootings.

Texas has some of the most lax gun laws in the nation. There are plenty of good men and women with guns. Yet, El Paso happened. And now Odessa.

There are steps that will address the crisis of gun violence in America.:

Require an effective background check on all gun transfers.

Forbid people with a history of stalking or violence from buying or owning a gun.

Allow local police leeway in issuing or refusing gun licenses instead of a “shall issue” rule.

These ideas aren’t original. Phoenix Geimer, son of Annapolis mass shooting victim Wendi Winters, made them in these pages two months ago.

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Maryland already does some of this, but there are loopholes. Lawmakers should work to close them.

Nationally, candidates for president and Congress should be asked to state clearly whether they will support national background checks, red flag laws and other steps to reduce gun violence. If they don’t see the need, they should be voted out of office.

Yes, the right to bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment. But the courts have shown over and over that there are legal limits to the basic freedoms our Constitution presents. We have done this before.

Motivated by gangland violence and an assassination attempt on President Franklin Roosevelt, Congress took a major step toward banning an entire class of weapon — the fully automatic machine gun —with passage of the National Firearms Act of 1934.

There have been steps forward since then and steps back. venue. Congress allowed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which banned semiautomatics that looked like assault weapons and large capacity magazines, to expire in 2004.

Gun manufacturers were given an unprecedented grant of immunity in 2005 with the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which prevented them from being held liable when crimes have been committed with their products.

These things can change. We can reduce gun violence, as Geimer suggested, by 50 percent if we take proactive steps both on the state and national level.

If we don’t act, we are doomed to another Odessa, another El Paso or Dayton, another Gilroy — another Annapolis.